DIY Playhouse For Our Children

I’ve always dreamed about crafting a loft house in which my kids can sleep and play. Now, I finally found some time to work on a wooden playhouse.

May I introduce? This is The Raspberry Lounge – our DIY wooden playhouse for kids. It’s a classic IKEA hack where I combined original products with other materials. Explore its features on two floors – but first of all, don’t miss the making of!

1. Making of

The basic element of our playhouse is a Kura bed from IKEA. Simple and plain…

No more stumbling upon the doorstep: After turning it around, I cut out one part of the wooden frame.

I recently bought an electric miter-box saw – and it turned out to be very helpful, especially for the roof framework.

Crafting a banister: the kids needed a more comfortable way up and down. To use Trofast as stairs is a well-known IKEA hack – but still a fantastic one! Thanks for your inspiration.

This show window belonged to an old supermarket. Fits pretty good here…

A window with glazing bars: Be careful with the right angles if you plan to construct one 😉

Dioder LED strip on the backside of the playhouse.

Creating a pattern: I printed raspberrys on a sheet and cut it out with a scalpel.

Afterwards, I fixed the pattern on poplar wood and sprayed colored lacquer upon.

2. Playing downstairs

Downstairs, you’ll find an area to play, read or just hang around. As you can see, our kids love to play supermarket so I fixed a sign to swing open, a small chalkboard to write special offers on and a green blind they can lift up in the morning. Inside, there’s a switch to turn on an LED strip that gives a warm and cosy light. A few years ago, our daughters got an own shop for christmas and played with it every day. For weeks! Then, from one day to another, their supermarket got out of fashion and I had to storage it somewhere… But now, it’s time for a comeback! I rearranged the elements of the shop and adapted the height a little bit – and here we go. I even recovered some of the old products (e.g. wooden fruits, paper packages), so the kids can sell or buy them in the shop! Time to play, folks!

3. Sleeping upstairs

How do you like the gabled roof? I’m not an architect so I am proud to present a very stable construction which I like pretty much! The height of our playhouse is now 230 centimeters and it fits right under the room’s ceiling.

4. My favourite features

Downstairs, I also fixed a tablet mount so that the kids are able to watch some cartoons.

Well, every house needs a secret door! And yes, The Raspberry Lounge has got one: Just press carefully against the left wall inside – and an almost invisible door springs open. Now, the kids are able to escape through the Trofast shelf after they pushed the boxes out of the fittings.

I hope you like our DIY playhouse! Thanks for reading – Oliver from Germany. Don’t miss our Instagram-like-a-website-story! Just search for “Playhouse42” profile on your Instagram app and see more photos and videos of The Raspberry Lounge.